Open badges are a 21st-century solution to the shortcomings of paper certificates in the age of digital, online identity management. These small visual signifiers which carry hard-coded meta-data can be issued by anyone in order to recognise achievement or participation in formal or informal activities. They link back directly to the issuer, the…

Information technology (IT) plays an increasingly significant role in today's world. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased that reliance. Employers in all industries are struggling with considerable shortages of skilled IT workers and are seeking innovative alternatives to meet these needs. Digital badging and micro-credentials have emerged as an…

With the emergence of digital credentialing and platforms to support learners and workers with entering and traversing the increasingly skill-based education and workforce ecosystem, Learning and Employment Record (LER) technologies have been identified as a promising solution for individuals to share and access their learning- and skills-data and…

Higher education faces increasing demands to take a more active and direct role in assuring employability for students. Micro-credentialing and badging is a growing movement, attractive for its flexibility and efficiency in connecting students with careers and jobs. This paper presents a case study of the development and pilot of an…

Digital badging programs are becoming increasingly popular in K-12, higher education, and corporate training environments. Instructional designers are playing a key role in the design and implementation of such programs. This qualitative research study was conducted to identify practical techniques from instructional designers who have been…

Digital badges are a promising innovative tool to support teacher candidates' instructional skill development. Although digital badges are increasingly utilized in online teaching and learning, their effectiveness is still under investigation. This exploratory study reports on 151 elementary level teacher candidates' participation and success rate…

Educators have long recognized that students gain important skills through real-world learning, which frequently takes place outside school hours or school walls. In Boston and Providence, after-school program leaders engaged in a bold experiment to formally recognize these skills through an innovative credential called a digital badge. For two…

This report represents another installment in our Learning and Employment Records (LERs) series, where we explored the unique challenges and opportunities that learners encounter when familiarizing themselves with LER technology. As the paradigm shifts towards skills-based hiring and career advancement gains momentum, it becomes imperative for…

The CLAVIER (Connected Learning And Virtual Intercultural Exchange Research) network grew rhizomatically as a result of open practice (Blyth, 2019), which is central to the CLAVIER approach. Informed by the field of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), the network has provided a safe space to experiment with the development and implementation of…

This case explores the creation of an open badge student-employee training program. Utilizing competency-based learning, we created nearly 40 digital credentials for technical skills related to various software products. We specifically share the decisions we made related to the process of defining competencies, formatting badge criteria, and…

In this commentary, the authors advocate support for the adoption of a universal credential registry. By connecting information about credentials and their value, Credential Engine's registry (CE) creates an ever-expanding atlas of educational possibilities for students. Many registrars, however, have yet to recognize the institutional value of…

Learning and Employment Records (LERs) require careful, deliberate design to ensure that workers benefit from their adoption and use. If designed without the inclusion of individuals who are most marginalized in the workforce, LERs could reproduce existing inequities in the talent pipeline. Digital Promise collaborated with workers in frontline…

Blockchain is a verification infrastructure that offers a solution to the problem of how to verify digital identity. This publication is aimed at policy-makers in education who have an interest in understanding the affordances of blockchain technology to the education sector. Exploratory exercises with blockchain demonstrate that it is already…

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are facing a potential challenge at questioning the means and method as to how education is delivered and learning is credited. The leading agent for this change is online learning and transfer of credit for potential employment. The aim of this paper is to look into these questions by raising the questions…

Digital credentials (or badges) allow evidence of achievement to be more detailed than is possible through grades, and can be shared more broadly than is possible through the academic transcript. Here, we illustrate the potential use of digital credentials in higher education through sharing an approach that utilised digital credentials to…